Capcom Pro Tour 2016 Details Revealed

The wait is over. Capcom has officially announced event dates, locations, and qualification guidelines for the 2016 Capcom Pro Tour, featuring Street Fighter V, and we have the details for you. This year will feature Global Premier Events and Ranking Events (similar to last year) the return of Online Events, and an all new Regional Finals. Read on for all the details.

Qualifying for Capcom Cup

This year’s Capcom Pro Tour will feature a whopping 72 events spread across four regions, including 11 Global Premier Events, Evo, and Capcom Cup which is slated to take place in December 2016. Capcom hopes to balance out the events and chances for players to qualify by separating them into North American, European, Asian, and Latin American regions.

Once again, 32 players will qualify for Capcom Cup. 11 can be chosen from Global Premier Events. 1 will be invited from EVO 2016. 4 will be chosen from Regional Finals events. 8 will be chosen from Global Point Leaderboards and 8 will be chosen from Regional Point Leaderboards -- top 2 from each region. All that being said, Capcom has made a big change to how players qualify in Global Premier Events.

The winners of Global Premier Events must place first to qualify for Capcom Cup. If a player has already qualified and wins another Global Premier Event, an additional spot is opened up on the Global Point Leaderboards. That means qualifying spots will no longer be awarded to second, third, or fourth place runner-ups like they were at Premier Events last year. To reiterate the point, a player must place first at a Global Premier Event in order to qualify for Capcom Cup.

“We’re super hype for the new Capcom Pro Tour structure and think the players are really going to love the new format. One of our main goals this year is to highlight the top talent in each region and offer more ways for players to get involved with the tour than ever before. With Ranking Events now acting as qualifiers for each Regional Finals, these tournaments now play a much larger role in players’ ability to qualify for Capcom Cup at the end of the year,” a Capcom representative told us.

“We’re also bringing back online tournaments that allow players to not only rack up ranking points, but qualify for the Regional Finals tournament as well. We feel these different avenues of competition, coupled with a brand new game, will result in at least few new faces at Capcom Cup this year.”

Points Leaderboards

Each region will feature 12 Ranking Events, 2 Online Events, and a Regional Finals Event. The winners of the Ranking Events and Online Events will be flown to a Regional Finals Event to compete for a spot in the Capcom Cup. If a player wins a Ranking Event and has already qualified for the Regional Finals Event, the next highest placing player will be selected.

Players will also earn Regional and Global Points. If a player is higher up on the Global Points Leaderboard, that ranking supersedes the Regional Point Leaderboards. Capcom provided the following example:

If a player earns 20 points in the North American region and 10 points in the Latin American region, that player will have 20 points on the NA leaderboard, 10 points on the LATAM leaderboard, and a total of 30 points on the Global leaderboard.

At each Regional Finals Event, there will be a last chance qualifier on the first day. The top two players from the last chance qualifier will be entered into the final 16 player bracket along with the 12 Ranking Event qualifiers and 2 Online Event qualifiers.

“In the past, we tried our best to balance out the regions equally with Premier and Ranking events, but this is such a global community with players willing to travel literally all over the world to compete, it made it difficult to showcase top players from each region. We feel we’ve struck a good balance with the global leaderboards ensuring we get the absolute best players in the world at our finals, but also Regional leaderboards that allows us to pinpoint who the best players are in a specific territory,” Capcom said.

Event Dates and Locations

Now that we’ve gone over how to qualify, you’ll want to mark your calendars for when you can qualify. Some events and dates are still to be determined at this stage, and each region's Regional Finals are still to be determined. The dates for Global Premier Events, and Ranking Events within each region are as follows: